About OER Development in Pressbooks
Building Engaging Learning Materials
Adapted from Fanshawe OER Design Studio
Now that we’ve covered how to organize the content within your book and outline its sections, we can look at the pedagogical elements often used in textbook design. Pedagogical elements are designed to provide context, overview, motivation, review, and other useful functions for learning. These elements can help build engagement with your text and make it easier for students to relate to your content. Pedagogical elements can be organized into three general categories: 1) openers, 2) closers, and 3) integrated pedagogical devices.
Openers
Openers are pedagogical elements that come before the main content. Their role is to lead the learner into the content and provide motivation or a preview.
For example, a Creative Writing textbook might open its chapters with quotes to provide examples of how to handle particular writing conventions or rhetorical devices.
- Learning objectives (LOs)
- Introduction/overview paragraph(s)
- Outlines
- Focus questions
- Thought-provoking quotes or images
- Short case studies or examples
Closers
Closers are pedagogical elements that come after the main content. Their role is to help learners review or reinforce their learning. Closers aim to help students summarize, review, or practice what they have learned.
- Key takeaway statements
- Key terms list
- Review questions
- A section/chapter summary
- Self-assessment
- Audio/visual interactive element
An excellent example of the use of closers to round out a chapter’s content and provide additional exercises can be seen in our example chapter, “Introduction to Diatonic Modes and the Chromatic Scale.”
Integrated Pedagogical Devices
Integrated pedagogical devices are elements incorporated into the main chapter content to help readers engage with and digest content. For example, each chapter in a mathematics textbook might include H5P exercises that help students practice concepts as they are introduced within the chapter’s text. Here is an example from a Culinary Math textbook:
Other pedagogical devices that might help students engage with your content include:
- a “Biography” element that highlights the biography and accomplishments of an expert in your field
- a “Case Study” element that illustrates key concepts by describing a real-world application
- vocabulary words provided in bold to highlight their importance to the text
- illustrations of figures or graphs with explanations of how they apply to the concepts in the chapter
- optional readings for more information (e.g. blog posts or articles)
- callout boxes with tips or examples (like this one!)
Often, these pedagogical elements are highlighted through design. For example, biographies may always appear inside a text box, accompanied by a photo. This visually distinguishes the pedagogical elements from the other content and makes the element recognizable through consistent use in each chapter, section, etc.
This content was adapted from “Pedagogical Elements” in the Fanshawe OER Development Guide. The content has been lightly adapted for tone to match the other chapters presented. The Fanshawe Guide is available under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Its content was originally adapted from:
“Structuring a Textbook with Pedagogical Elements” from Open Textbook Publishing Orientation (PUB 101) Modules by the University of Minnesota is offered under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
